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Saturday, October 31, 2009

Valerie Lawson, has the healthy ruddy complexion of a woman who spends a good bit of her time outdoors. This makes sense since she recently moved to the hinterlands of Maine and is editing a magazine "Off the Coast." She has been a mainstay in the Boston poetry scene for years, most notably in the poetry slam scene popularized by her partner Michael Brown. Both Lawson and Brown have taken over "Off the Coast," a well-respected New England journal from the founder, and have made their own unique imprint on it. Lawson was the slam master of the Bridgewater Poetry Slam at the Daily Grind Coffeehouse, has traveled to Europe to perform poetry and help host the Swedish Slam Nationals in 2002. Lawson was a participant in Optimal Avenues, a mixed-media cultural exchange between Massachusetts and Ireland. Her recent collection of poems is "Dog Watch," a book of poems that was released in 2007. I talked with her on my Somerville Community Access TV show: "Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."

Doug Holder: You and Michael Brown took over the helm of "Off the Coast" magazine in Maine. What's the back-story to this?

Valerie Lawson: Off the Coast magazine began about 15 years ago. It was an extension of the Live Poet's Society in Maine. It was originally an anthology for the society. It later became a triennial publication. The previous owner's wife got ill with cancer, so he decided to let go of the magazine to take care of her. We were happy that the magazine had a good reputation when we took it over. We had pretty good bios that indicated we could do this. So George, the owne,r handed it over to us. We inherited a list of subscribers but no money.

So far for the first two issues we carried the magazine. This year we are in production for our 4th issue. We are short a couple hundred dollars to put this out.

DH: You guys moved from Massachusetts to Maine. Was that because of the magazine?

VL: Well no. Michael was teaching at Mt. Ida College. They closed the program he ran there. It was the Communications program. So we tossed around ideas about what we wanted to do with our lives. At one point we were looking at buying a small piece of property in Maine as an investment. It was to be a place to retire. But when the closing of the program forced the issue, Maine seemed like a cheaper place to live. We started to look at property up there and off we went. It is a six-hour drive to Somerville.

DH: You were, and still are I believe involved in the SLAM poetry scene. I think you cut your teeth in the Cantab Lounge. Can you talk a bit about your involvement? What is SLAM poetry for the uninformed?

VL: It is a poetry reading that is judged Olympic style on a 1 to 10 scale. It is really fun. It is a competition. It is basically a poetry show.

I started out with the South Shore Poets that was a typical, quiet, library series. I loved poetry. I was going to the library and I liked the series. One time at the Fuller Museum in Brockton they were putting on a poetry slam. I thought: "WOW,” this just brought the level up. It was so much fun. People in the audience were engaged and excited. I said: “I want to do that." I met Michael there.

DH: You were involved were involved with the Doc. Brown Traveling Poetry Show, no?

VL: Yes. At the old Jimmy Tingle Theatre in Davis Square.

DH: Your poem "Evening" in your book "Dog Watch" is a beautifully written piece about the beach. I can only describe it as great tidal drama? Are you drawn to the sea?

VL: Oh yeah. I am a water person. I have to be near water. We can see the bay where we live. We used to live on Cape Cod in Buzzard's Bay, and across from a pond in Plymouth.

DH: Has the move to the isolation of Maine helped or hindered you?

VL: Both. It's tough to be away from the Boston poetry community. I miss the frequent conversations. But I am getting a lot of reading done. I have more time to write.

Evening

Boats tethered in their slips,day captains maneuver trailers—they've waited years for the chance of a mooring.Sandpipers and plovers fuss over minnowsand sand fleas, chase receding waves,skitter from the next wave rolling in.Sea lavender pokes briny blossomsabove tidal pools. The used tissue of sea lettucelitters the sand, catches in salt marsh grass.Terns dive, miss fish, hover over another target.

A horseshoe crab, empty of life but shell complete down to spiky telson marks high tide. The long flight bone of a gull weathers smooth nearby. Neither bird call nor blue blood matter. It always come to this, tossed on the edge, still waiting for somethingas the sun edges below the horizon again.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Literary journals as a rule, gathering work from several sources, tend one way or the other: to demonstrate a coterie likeness (in theme or style), or to celebrate like Walt Whitman a grand embrace of variety. The Fall 2009 Hanging Loose sets itself unflinchingly to the latter strategy, giving writers and readers, in this time of economic constraint and hesitation, carte blanche to browse and relish in a range of expressions, from thrift to luxury, from the timid companionship of a calf that follows KEITH TAYLOR’s father around in “The Cattle on the Parthenon’s South Frieze” (p. 84), to KATHY SCHNEIDER’s endearing catalog of excuses not to leave an elusive lover in “Lapigi” (99).

We look through garments, bric-a-brac, we look for others. Between her glassy liberal psychologist and the less forgiving damselflies in “Spooning” (60) JENI OLIN is brought to the surprising consumerist-wit question, “Wouldn’t it be touching/to try on people at a sample sale?”

As shoppers meet limitations, they economize with lists, lists such as the long-lined odes beginning this issue of HL. In “Ode to my Backyard” (19-21) the passage revisiting ‘the so sweet a place” where John Keats is buried in Rome echoes throughout the achieved negative capability of David Kirby’s breathless three-page poem. Then in the array of vignettes and strophes, a gem by Rosalind Brackenbury, “Ferry across the James River” stands quietly forth in its intimacy and clarity:

the water was carved the bow wave in a deep almost colorless curve; you stood at the stern of the ferry and I came to find you, I knew you’d be there wearing your jacket, cap and gloves; and above you the gulls, their bellies lit by the low sun from underneath, hundreds of them following the wake (26).

If HL demonstrates an eye for referential literary talent, it is not blind to the harder experiences, say, of CHRISTEIN GHOLSON’s “Sleep Deprivation,” which records the twists of events in a lidless tenancy building:

One night I heard two drunk kids blubbering “I love you, man” to each other in the hallway. A bit later—fists, bottles breaking… (34).

Still with plenty of play currency for what Nabokov called “unreal estate,” an abundance of cultural acquirements and thoughts for pennies keep turning HL’s pages. We are bargain drivers, says ELIZABETH SWADOS in her poem of anxiety for the critic and author of The Anxiety of Influence, “A Question for Harold Bloom” (85). Look says MARK PAWLAK, a contributing editor, with “Apologies for Rilke,” paying legerdemain for one of the Austrian poet’s most memorable meditations on the spiritual challenge of enduring art. And just why not? Monte Python superimposes wags of a mustache on the Mona Lisa, and as Rolland Barthes has pointed out there is, when all is boiled down, no proof for semantic difference between the pop of film and belles of lettres.

We ask to read as far as the eye sees, and the dreamlike atmospheres of the acrylic paintings by ARNOLD MESCHES, HL’s feature artist for this issue, achieve intensity, volume, through the painter’s method of “unlikely juxtapositions.” Subjects of artifice, acrobats, flame-hurlers, or of sophistication, a white-clothed dinner table, find themselves in the bewildered setting of woods at night. Mesches’ technique of contrasting brilliant colors against deeply obscure backgrounds draws in and offers to swallow the viewer’s eye with enchantments of luxurious baroque ballroom interiors, as well as with the blazes of fire in the nocturnal sylvan scenery.

Mesches leaves us with an overall effect of dark surrealism bordering on expressionism, with the costumed and masked characters of children’s entertainment and nightmares, all befitting the theatrical harrowing of the Halloween season. Lock your doors. Don’t pick up that phone. And cover these paintings!

The Fall 2009 is a well-selected, finely and handsomely bound journal of intriguing and entertaining pen-craft and artistry that makes an apt companion for considerate readers of interest. It is well worth your nickel.

Hanging Loose 95is available for $9.00(3 issues for $22.00…) fromHanging Loose Press231 Wyckoff Street Brooklyn, New York 11217print225@aol.comvisit their website at www.hangingloosepress.com

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Lo Galluccio’s non-sequitur unexpectedness is one of the most refreshing language-/thought-variants on Planet Earth: “Explosions in the open fists of leaves/Over East 4th Street America’s quilt/Drops handkerchief for patriotic infants/Crawling the street/Who don’t fuss about the November moon/Distant fixture of frozen/Niagara.” (“Moonsong,” p. 44). And if you really start meditating on the sequences here, a whole new kind of sense emerges. There’s 9-11 hidden in here somewhere, the whole idea of the U.S. being subjected to international terrorism, all contrasted with totally non-political (moons and frost) Nature.

And behind all the epistemological scrambling there is an underlying philosophy that calls for sane joy in the midst of endless man-made jumblings: “ I had a true love, I had an angry star/He flung me near, he flung me far/No Mecca can survive such an angry star/Will the moon take me back?/Will the moon have her way?/Will it take another century, a year, or a day?/It will rise again, it will rise again/Like a child whose love is God/Shiver me hard.” (“I had a True Love,” p.25). It’s a real aesthetic trip to sail through the world of Lo Galluccio’s poetry. None of the usual 1,2,3’s, but dice-throws of logic that ultimately force the reader to re-think the whole political-psychological structure of contemporary reality. You really get inside Lo Galluccio and let her flow through you and it’s like a trip through the psychedelic Andes.

Unlike Irene’s first full-length book “self portrait drawn from many 65 poems in 65 years,” where she explores the formation of poetic language through grids of text which make allusion to various historical figures, including artists and saints, the new book is written more in the style of letters home or journal entries to a travelogue of her visit to Cyprus. In her dedication she reveals her own discovery: that her father never went back to Cyprus because they (the family) were more important to him than possessing the past.

But that has nothing to do with the acute beauty of the island which Koronas details in seemingly mundane lists that obviously transcend the normal, especially the normal American way of life. From April 7:

There is an unexpected interlude with a villager named John who takes a liking to Irene and invites her to stay in his empty house in back. She carefully navigates the relationship with this strange man, in whom she sees craziness, loneliness and compassion.

friday

after breakfast i walk the chalk path to john’s farm

we talk for three hours

john loved a five year old woman with three children. She was jealous,

hooked on amphetamines.

She dreams, she walks, she talks with relatives and neighbors. After awhile sleeping on a single bed in her cousin’s house.

sunday

1.with bag, camera, peanuts and rain, rain washes my hair, I duck under small tree, sea merges with sky. on my left on my right, mountains rub blue. My voice my walking stick thumps, tender as aging skin, dry earth. gray sheet hangs over distance. i run back down full of quick insinuations

Koronas catches the moods of the days, whether she is alone exploring or participating in the village’s events. In the following anecdote the restaurant owner suggests to a group that if they lie over the saint’s skeletal home, their spinal problems will be cured.

saint erogenous

beside an open air restaurant a small stone chuch fits ten people wicks in oil, incense illumines entrance plain sarcophagas dominates space

……

i unzip my thoughts spread my body over his tomb hewn rock

Indeed saints form an overlay or backdrop of a holy tribe in Pentakomo an island which is predominantly Greek Orthodox Catholic.

two nuns

icons kissed right to left. women stand, men sit. restless children wander. Near the end of the liturgy some of the men hold an icon of saint Irene, coffin above their heads…

There are rich, but simply told accounts of war stories and village encounters. One senses that Koronas has indeed resolved to feel the rain of this place while seekingsome protection, always wielding her camera to capture the scene-ery.

sunset

late day requests more than i am willing to give

i do not want to leave my father in olive groves, kourion’s basilica

wednesday night’s soft purple yogurt on potato.

There are many layers to this work and it deserves several readings. It is fascinating to visit an unknown village on the Mediterranean, to see what of the ancient remains and what of modernity has struck through. Irene balances her own interior life and reactions with the lives of those around her and nature on the island. Her writing is never over-blown or embellished, but broken carefully into poetic lines which always stay in lower-case. Each poem corresponds to a day or a saint, an event, an encounter. It seems that she is democratizing the alphabet this way so no part of speech carries extra weight. Each poem corresponds to a day or a saint, an event, an encounter It is a style that works well with her highly visual and sensual sense. On May 13, she leaves the Pentakomo and in her final poem ends with a recipe for how to make ketheis or meatballs. Like the feminist message a while back that “history is lunch.” --that is a bit how Irene sees things-- close to the earth, the women, the saints, what nature gives us for nourishment and creativity. All these she walks through with grace, and an artist’s heart and curiosity.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

ANONYMOUS FOX is a book you can dive right into even though the familiar yet obscure images keep you wondering what deftly sculpted insight you’re about to experience. One thing you’ll notice right away is that the author’s “veins secrete/Ink and tap water” and like “a cat keeps its own couch/I keep mine.”

She’s an individualist and yet, at the same time, just like the masses would, she dedicates this book to her grandson, Matthew, who will read it some day and see both beauty and horror concerned his grandmother, who named this collection after a dead fox Nadia wants to take the tail of, use it for a paintbrush and “bury the rest./It’s my fox isn’t it?/...As for its fur, the author says sardonically, “why not keep it…like Jews’ hair stored/in an Argentine barn/for future use…/Isn’t all death a good riddance,/Lewd providence,/Quitting earth of the useless,/The dirties,/While we expedient managers/Go about our cleansing business.”

All through the book you’ll discover metaphors from nature that turn around and surprise you. For example, in “American Brunhilde” she starts with “Summers, I sleep circled with fans,/In kind Stygian light./Shades drawn./My dreams can’t be spied on/I’ve heard folks in the next town,/So fearful of terrorists,/They’ve painted their doors shut./The mailman puts their letters in the trees.”

The person to whom all this is dedicated appears in the book now and then is revealed as a fellow poet or doctor in training… Her grandson wants to know if he can pick the white flowers on the pea plants. To quote her own quote: “How do peas get into pods?” he asks. “Call me when it happens.” A universal concept of where there is youth there is hope… But then again, she reveals in “I Can Tell You Now”: “I can tell you now, I never expected this—to be old and ugly,/To turn away from the beach,/Struggle with the lid of a jar…I took misfortune’s road to the forest./Saw the warlock’s house and walked right in…”

Some of these poems were previously printed in prestigious publications like Harvard magazine and Iowa Review. She won the Flume Press poetry chapbook award and she’s published a variety of poetry books and chapbooks, nonfiction books, and fiction.The publisher left no obvious note of the book’s price, which indicates what you may agree with when you read it, that this book is priceless…or in any case, certainly worth a read.

Catching Up With Doug Holder/Mass Poetry Website

Newton Writing and Publishing Center

(Click on pic to go to site) The Newton Writing and Publishing Center provides guidance, inspiration, encouragement, and all the tools you need to revise your work to perfection, whether it’s a novel, a poem, a short story, your memoirs, or a non-fiction project. But we are not just a place to work; we have fun here, too, with lively open mic events, catered author appearances, and book launching parties

Small Press and Poetry Collection at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass.

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur : 1974 to 1983 by Doug Holder

(To order click on picture) “Doug Holder is a poet of the old city, the city of our fathers, of the 1950s and later. Mr. Holder writes poems like notes in a diary. I found myself struck by their economy, wit, and urban melancholy... He has a voice unlike that of any of his contemporaries. Holder is a poet of the street and coffeehouses, an observer of the everyday. He writes of old Marxists, security guards and his relationship to his deceased father—themes of the common life. I am drawn to these poems as I am to the poetry of Philip Levine and the prose of James T. Farrell. But Holder’s poetry is deeper than that. He sees the world not for what it is, but on his own terms. He is living in the poem rather than in poetry.” ~ Sam Cornish, First Boston Poet Laureate

Portrait of An Artist as a Young Poseur by Doug Holder (Order on paypal.com)

OH Don't ,She Said..a poem/song project

( Preview and Purchase--click on pic) Oh Don’t, She Said ~ by Jennifer Matthews. Jennifer wrote this song after her friend and notable poet, Doug Holder, showed her his poem: “Oh don’t, she said, it’s cold.” After reading it, Jennifer felt inspired and heard a song in it. She had to change some of the words to make it work lyrically with the music, but she made sure to stay close to the original poem as much as possible. Jennifer played all the instruments on it and engineered it. It was mixed by Phil Greene at Normandy Sound, who worked with the likes of Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and many, many other noted artists. Doug wrote it after a conversation he had with his mother while riding on a train to New York City. It is dedicated to her, Rita Holder. Genre: Rock: Acoustic Release Date: 2014

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So Spoke Penelope by Tino Villanueva

(Click on picture to order now!) "An intense poetic hovering over a situation of prolonged expectation....The poems in SO SPOKE PENELOPE are simply amazing, whether in the form of an apostrophe to the absent Odysseus or to the Gods, whether in a narrative past-tense mode or in the immediacy of the lived present, whether in the staccato of monosyllables or in the exuberance of unusual compounds, whether they employ Greek-feeling pentameter lines, alliteration, or anaphora. This poetic cycle shows that the whole range of human experience is contained in Penelope of Ithaca."—Werner Sollors

Visitors from around the country and world...( Click on real time view for complete list)

New From Muddy River Books: Eating Grief at 3AM" by Doug Holder

(To order click on picture) “There is a sad, sweet nostalgia in Holder’s Eating Grief at 3 AM, a sense of loss and sadness for the places and the people who were a part of those scenes: the hunchback, the Tennessee Williams’ half lost blondes, the turbaned men and the discarded move nostalgically through life. Yet Holder finds something almost like beauty or knowledge in the abandoned warehouses with weeds crawling to the roof. He imagines when Mrs. Plant, an old art teacher, was an enigmatic young woman ‘feverishly taking notes about the paintings, a love note stuffed in a pocket of her winter coat.’ There are always dreams, even if never fulfilled. There is so often the sense of time passing, of letting go-- letting go of people, letting go of Harvard Square Theater and the Wursthaus, balms that seemed like they would always be there. And they are and always will be in Holder’s moving poems.” — Lyn Lifshin, Author of Cold Comfort (Black Sparrow Press) "

Elizabeth Lund Interviews Doug Holder-Founder of the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Please donate to the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene- keep us alive!

(Click on Picture to order) "Starting with Allen Ginsberg and ending with Charlie Parker, Sam Cornish takes us on a whirlwind tour of some of the livelier segments of 1950s and early ’60s American culture. With non-stop energy, syncopated rhythms, and a fast pace that keeps you humming as you turn the pages, Cornish visits a wide array of writers, musicians, and films, stopping along the way to visit local poetry scenes and pay tribute to the homeless and poor. Calling on Jack Kerouac, Langston Hughes, Marlon Brando, Miles Davis and a host of others, Cornish makes us feel the excitement of those times, even as he and his companions absorb the complex and often disturbing history of what he aptly calls “My Young America.” — Martha Collins

Read what people are saying about the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

click on pic for more info..... Diane Lockward ( New Jersey Council of the Arts Fellow and publisher of Tarapin Books)--"You provide an invaluable service for poets." Rusty Barnes ( Night Train magazine) "Doug. I know your reviewers have made a difference to me and my work. Keep up the good work". J.L. Morin ( Lecturer at Boston University/ Library Review) "That's a lovely blog you've got there, Doug Holder." ( Sherill Tippins--"Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel.") " I love your introduction, and fervently hope that Somerville never meets anything like the Chelsea Hotel's fate. It's always a pleasure to read your blog -- even when I'm not in it!" Alan Kaufman ( Editor of the "Outlaw Bible of American Literature")-- " ...a terrific blog..." Perry Glasser--( Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award): " The blog is very impressive." Elizabeth Swados ( Tony Nominated Playwright, Guggenheim Award Winner ): "Thanks you so much for this review on your blog. It helps so much, not just in terms of getting people to know that it exists, but also makes me feel that someone has gotten what I have tried to do. I wish you the very best." Marguerite G. Bouvard, PhD-- Resident Scholar Women's Research Center-Brandeis University: " I love reading your blog. What a refreshing respite from the New York Times. Thanks for all you do for poetry." Ed Hamilton--author of "Legends of the Chelsea Hotel" commenting on Chelsea Hotel article: " That's a great piece. Thanks for sending the link along." Richard Moore-- Finalist/T.S.Eliot Prize " I have just read your wonderful interview of the wonderful Eric Greinke!" Steven Ford Brown (Former Director of Research for the George Plimpton Interview Series "The Writer in America"): " You did a great job with the Clayton Eshleman interview, especially the personal stuff. So much better than doing the dry talk about literary polemics." Celia Gilbert (Pushcart Prize in Poetry) "Doug thanks so much for that fine shout out. I'm delighted how you put it all together!" Karen Alkalay-Gut, PhD ( Professor of English-Tel Aviv University) "Doug, I enjoy your posts immensely" Lise Haines ( Writer-in-Residence, Emerson College-Boston) "I love your blog!" "( Elizabeth Searle- Executive Board/Pen New England) : "Like your blog. I like the interview with Rick Moody." Ploughshares Staff- " Everyone at Ploughshares is a big fan of your blog." Suzanne Wise (Publicity Director Poets House-NYC): "Thank you so much for this wonderfully thoughtful portrait of our new home! You really "get us" and you translate that understanding vividly. I love the way you talk about Stanley's ( Kunitz) giant dictionary as a relic from another age. We're glad to preserve such relics." Kathleen Bitetti ( Chief Curator Medicine Wheel Productions/ Former Director of the Artists Foundation--Boston.) " Love your interview with Marc Zegans...wonderful blog!"

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Ibbetson Street is now in a partnership with Endicott College!

(Click on to go to the Endicott College Website)Ibbetson will be supported in part and formally affiliated with Endicott College.

The Arts and Literature in Somerville, Mass.: Off the Shelf with Doug Holder

( Click on picture to go to column) A weekly column in The Somerville News--Somerville's only independent newspaper!

The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 13, 2010

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ISCS PRESS--WE WILL PUBLISH YOUR BOOK!

Boston's leading co-publisher... (Click on title for more information)

The Boston Globe: Poetic Healing at McLean Hospital

This was the lead article in the Living/Arts section of the Boston Globe. (Feb. 2000) It has to do with Doug Holder's poetry workshops at McLean Hospital and the history of this literary landmark. (Click on pic for full article)

(Click on picture to view) A Production of Somerville Community Access TV's show " Poet to Poet : Writer to Writer." Moderator: Gloria Mindock, Producer: Doug Holder, Director: Bill Barrell

"The Paris of New England" Interviews with Poets and Writers" by Doug Holder

( Click on pic to order this and other Ibbetson Press titles) Interviews with poets and writers from the Paris of New England Somerville, Mass. " Thank you for your interview book. I read it straight through last night and enjoyed it very much...So many good ideas in one book." Eric Greinke-- Presa Press "Very engrossing collection of Holder's interviews, with a wide range of writers about their lives and work. Included are Mike Basinski, Mark Doty, Robert Creeley, Ed Sanders, Hugh Fox, Robert K. Johnson, and Pagan Kennedy.-- Chiron Review

Advertise with a popular online and print literary column in the heart of the Paris of New England

Reach a wide swath of the Boston Area literary community through The Somerville News' "Off the Shelf" literary Column with Doug Holder. The column is online and in a weekly print edition that reaches 15,000 readers. For more information click on picture.

Grolier Poetry Book Shop

" Poetry is honored every day at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square, the oldest continuous poetry book shop in the United States. We stock over 15,000 volumes and spoken word CD's. Special orders are welcome. Come and visit us at 6 Plympton St. or online http://grolierpoetrybookshop.org (click on picture)

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Doug Holder/ Founder/ Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene: Advertise with a popular Boston Area Literary Site--For Low rates-- Contact: dougholder@post.harvard.edu 617-628-2313

Poetry Workshops With Doug Holder

( Click on Picture for Doug Holder's website) Doug Holder has led poetry workshops, both for indviduals and groups for a decade now. Robert Olen Butler ( Pulitzer Prize Winner for Literature) wrote of Holder's work: " I've been greatly enjoying your poems. You have a major league talent, man." Available for individual or groups. Expert in gently helping the novice into poetry and the poetry scene. Reasonable Rates. Available for editing. Call 617-628-2313 for more information. Or email: dougholder@post.harvard.edu

Ibbetson Street Press

No One Dies at the Au Bon Pain by Doug Holder

Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From The Back Bay to the Back Ward by Doug Holder

A poetry collection that deals with Boston, and Holder's experiences working on the psychiatric units at McLean Hospital

Of All the Meals I Had Before by Doug Holder

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The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel (To order click on picture)

A new poetry book by Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene Founder, Doug Holder. "I'm enjoying 'The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel' -- perfect poems, especially in that ambiance." Dan Tobin -- Director of Creative Writing--Emerson College-Boston, Mass./ " It is quintessential Holder& bristles with sardonic wit. Congratulations."-- Eric Grienke (founder of Presa Press) / " I finished "The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel'...greatly enjoyed the menagerie of characters and imperfect human beings I met along the way. Excellent work Doug!"-- Paul Steve Stone ( Creative Director W.B.Mason and the autthor of "Or So It Seems.") / "I am reminded in the pages of this collection of meeting, a year or two before her death, the artist Alice Neel, who painted gorgeously surreal ironic portraits of famous and ordinary people in the 1930's and 40's--and shivering as she looked me over. Doug Holder looks at the world through a similarly sharp and amused set of eyes...Rich nuggets of humor and wry reflection throughout this collection." Pamela Annas ( Asst. Dean of Humanities U/Mass Boston/Reviewer Midwest Book Review) “....particularly liked The Tunnel—a little masterpiece!” Kathleen Spivack ( Permanent Visiting Professor of Creative Writing/American Literature at the University of Paris) "I want to tell you this was just about the best chap I ever read, I absolutely DEVORED it..."--( Robin Stratton--Boston Literary Magazine) "An acclaimed Boston-area poet writes about characters who have captured his interest over the years -- a colonial dame with purple hair, a postal worker ready to be returned to his sender, J. Edgar Hoover's secret love -- in this skillfull collection of short, free form poems." (Perkins School of the Blind Website) Click on picture to access Cervena Barva Press

About Me

Doug Holder is the founder of the independent literary press Ibbetson Street. He teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. He is the arts/editor of The Somerville News, and for the past twenty years has run poetry groups at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. His poetry and prose have appeared in the Bay State Banner, The Boston Globe, The Boston Globe Magazine, Rattle, Endicott Review, Long Island Quarterly, Toronto Quarterly and many others. He holds an M.A. in Literature from Harvard University.

Poems From The Left Bank: Somerville, Mass. by Doug Holder

( Click on picture to order) "The poems are full of life, witty and sympathetic and sharp all at once. And most of all, full of an engaged affection for the place and people. If Burns is Scotland's Bard, you are certainly Somerville's..." Kate Chadbourne, PhD ( Lecturer-Harvard University-Celtic Languages and Literature)

From The Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers" by Doug Holder

(Click on picture to order) Interviews by Doug Holder from the Paris of New England: Somerville, Mass. "I am impressed. A lot of great interviews compiled over the years."-- Brian Morrisey--Poesy Magazine / " A very engrossing read..."--Chiron Review / "Doug Holder knows how to ask important questions"--New Pages

Advertise with the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene.

Doug Holder founder says: "Reach a wide audience of poets, writers, editors and publishers, Have your ad linked to your site. The Boston area Small Press and Poetry Scene is well known in the small press community..." For information about rates, etc...email: dougholder@post.harvard.edu or call 617-628-2313